Conversion of hole states by acoustic solitons

The hole states in the valence band of a large class of semiconductors are degenerate in the projections of angular momentum. Here we show that the switching of a hole between the states can efficiently be realized by acoustic solitons. The microscopic mechanism of such a state conversion is related to the valence band splitting by local elastic strain. The conversion is studied here for heavy holes localized at shallow and deep acceptors in silicon quantum wells.